Meet Vinny, a victim of a natural disaster. Poor Vinny, an English Bulldog Mix, has been sitting in the shelter in Ringgold, GA since early April. We were contacted about his plight 4 weeks ago. Sadly, with a shortage of foster homes so bad that we couldn’t even find places for our PB English Bulldogs, we had to pass on rescuing him.
A few weeks ago, when a foster home did become available and we were able to open up boarding space at our vets, I searched on Petfinder, for Vinny. Vinny was no longer posted by the shelter. Hoping that he had been adopted, because the alternative was unthinkable, I moved on to other needy English Bulldogs.
Very early this morning, I got a call from a wonderful woman who was on her way to Ringgold, GA to pick up 30 dogs for transport to the north. She made me aware that city officials in Ringgold were planning on euthanizing all the shelter dogs to make room for displaced dogs coming into the shelter, because of the recent devastating storms. She said, “there’s a bulldog at the shelter and if I could take him, she would be able to add one more dog on her transport north. All dogs were going to be put down TODAY.” After seeing a rather poor picture of this dog, I thought that he could possibly be a pure breed English Bulldog and agreed to accept him into the rescue. This all had to happen very quickly as the Ringgold shelter was indeed preparing to euthanize all the dogs they were housing. AND the transport would be leaving the shelter within the hour.
The transport dropped off a very scared dog, his shelter name was Vinny!!!!! This poor boy sat in the shelter as a stray for more than 5 weeks, lived through the devastation of Ringgold, GA and had been scheduled to be PTS in a matter of hours.
Vinny is now resting comfortably at our vets, in quarantine, after being in the shelter for so long. Although I was not able to touch him, he appears very docile and has the sweetest eyes. After a 2 week quarantine period, during which he will have a medical workup, we will be able to ascertain more information about his medical condition and personality. Vinny appears to be an English Bulldog Mix.
Update 5/18/11:
After 2 weeks in isolation, we had hoped that we would be able to bring Vinny to a foster home sometime this week.
He never developed any “shelter infections” fortunately. Unfortunately, Vinny arrived covered in ticks. About 60 were removed by hand, an additional 30 or so, fell off after he had Flea and tick medication applied…BUT….he is still covered in ticks. Poor baby has to wait until it is safe to give him another application. I went to play with him on his first day of freedom. He is very thin and literally covered in ticks or scabby areas from where ticks were removed. He is a sweet boy but wasn’t too interested in interacting with me, he was so thankful to be out of isolation and able to explore the vets property. He is very thin from his stay at animal control and is out of shape from being confined for more than 8 weeks. He seems to be a bit withdrawn, possibly depressed but who wouldn’t be after all he’s been through. Based on how he acted with me and the vet staff while we were together, he is a sweet sweet boy.
Vinny is definitely an Olde English Bulldog (EB/boxer mix). We’ll keep you updated on his progress.
Update 7/27/2011:
Vinny has been adopted
